Dec 21, 2012

RiotStatikk Chats about Talon and Riven Nerfs

With the tentative PBE balance changes underway, Talon and Riven received substantial nerfs rather than the expected nerfing of Black Cleaver (which got BUFFED?) As a response to this on the general forums, many players are complaining heavily, which has led to some rebuttal from Statikk as you can see below:

Blade of the Exile cooldown increase to 110/85/50 Seconds from 75/60/45 Seconds.

Riot just wants us to build Ravenous Hydra for Health Regen q.q

Firstly, some of the information you guys are getting from these unofficial sites are incorrect. For example, there is no change to the ratio of Riven's shield at all, we are simply slightly buffing the base shield value for Valor.

The goal for the Regen reduction is to reinforce the value of timing and counter play to Riven in lane. Now when you poke or trade damage with Riven, it sticks a bit more. As the Riven player, it is now more important to make sure you're trading while your shield is up as much as possible and getting out before your defenses are down.

Shadow Assault's damage per hit reduced to 120/170/220 from 120/190/260

Q: Does riot want talon to always suck or something?Statikk:

No, we have no intention of making Talon unviable, we're simply looking to find a balance for him in the context of Season 3.

The reality is that many of our AD casters were tuned to a state where they could exist in Season 2 with extremely poor itemization that was non-ideal for them.

We now created an environment where they have legitimate optimal item paths and the numbers are now out of balance.

The question to ask ourselves is if Black Cleaver is still too strong for AD Carries like MF or Graves. If we were to nerf Black Cleaver, it may become impossible to even think of building it on non AD Casters.

Looking at any strong item with above 3000+ gold cost will show a high win rate because if you have the resources to buy an item of this tier, you are most likely ahead in the first place. Items are not only an indicator of your future success but also a reflection of your past success. Any decently strong high tier item should statistically look and feel "overpowered."

As a closing note here, there is a buff to Talon that is impossible for the dataminers to get to. We are fixing a bug where the damage amplification from Cutthroat was not actually working. Source

Q: How is a bug fix a buff?Gypsylord:

Say a champion's ult was intended to do 5000 true damage but there was this nasty bug that made it ACTUALLY do 1 damage. If we were to go and fix said bug we would be BUFFING that champion's damage by 4999.

Talon's E currently amps his damage by 0% for two seconds against a single target, regardless of rank. This bugfix will buff his single target burst by 15% when E is at max rank Source

Can't wait for my Talon E to do 5000 true damage...just kidding, I can read, I swear!

Q: Wow has it always been like this? I could have sworn I've never noticed it.